


The Sea Will Be Strong

by FyrMaiden



Series: Spin The Bottle [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of 'Fairytale Feeling', where Blaine is a little more fluid than we know him, and he and Tina are a little bit lonely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sea Will Be Strong

**Author's Note:**

> A brief continuation – or conclusion, if you prefer – of [this](http://vampireisabitstrong.tumblr.com/post/76329013307/prompt-what-if-theyd-never-played-spin-the), which was written for the Glee Twist Fest.  
> \- title cribbed from Robbie Williams ‘She’s The One’.  
> In which Blaine is a little more fluid than he is in canon. ~1800 words  
> Blaine/Tina (because ‘Blina’ sounds like a Russian pancake.)

They kiss again, in the winter of their senior year. 

It could be loneliness that brings them together. Blaine has lost Kurt to the bright lights and perpetual motion of New York, and also to his own propensity to both over think and fail to think at all. Tina and Mike broke up before Mike had even left for Chicago and the pursuit of his dream of dancing professionally, deciding mutually that long distance is hard and doesn’t often work. They are, both of them, rudderless and drifting on an uncertain, shifting sea. It only stands to reason that they somehow drift in the same direction. 

Blaine trusts Tina with his secrets. It’s Tina to whom he admits his crush on Sam, and who sits with him at lunch as they laugh at Sam’s ludicrous impressions. It’s Tina who joins the Cheerios with him, because they both need a place to belong, and it’s Tina who refuses to coddle his broken heart, who tells him to grow up and move on. It hurts when she says it, but, he thinks, she’s not actually wrong. 

Similarly, it is Blaine who sees the slow erosion of Tina’s confidence as she is ignored and passed over time and again. Despite Rachel’s parting assurance that her senior year will be her turn to shine, Artie elects Blaine the new Rachel, and she tries to resent that but it’s _Blaine_ and it’s hard to dislike Blaine’s earnest honesty. After that, she fails to get the role she wants in the musical - that goes to _Santana_ , of all people, who doesn’t even go to McKinley anymore - and Coach Sylvester can’t be bothered to remember her name. Four years of being Asian Number One, and Tina is ready to snap. Bitterness becomes a natural recourse. She’d rather be a jerk than forgotten. Tina’s senior year is a chronicle of loneliness, isolation, and ever increasing anger at a world the refuses to recognise her. Blaine sees her, though. Blaine always sees her. 

Neither of them really foresees January, though. 

*

Tina knows it’s a crush. She knows, in her heart, that she is crushing hard on a boy who can’t love her back. She creates paper houses regardless, and fills them with her love and Blaine’s warm, effusive smile. She names their children and chooses their nanny and wonders in idle moments between classes, or watching Blaine and Sam together, what it would be like to be Tina Anderson, what expectations people would have of her when they only saw her name. Realistically, she knows she’s being ridiculous, but the heart is a fickle muscle and does not listen to reason. A harmless crush blooms into love, and the new semester breaks around about the same time as her resolve. 

“A Sadie Hawkins dance,” she declares when they get to the ‘Any Other Business’ section of their student council meeting. Blaine blanches and drops his gaze to the desk. 

“Um,” he says. “I don’t – let’s put it to a vote.” 

They vote in favour. Tina squeaks and bounces in her chair, and Blaine forces a smile that falters a little too fast. He gathers his books and notes, and waits only long enough to not be the first to leave. 

Tina catches him at his locker, touches his arm gently. “Blaine?” she says, her voice soft and concerned. He’s tense, almost vibrating where he stands, and she rubs his wrist with her thumb experimentally. “Talk to me, Blainey-days. Please?” 

“It’s nothing,” he says, turning his head to look at her. She knows him well enough to know he’s lying, but she doesn’t know how to access the truth. “I think I’m going to sit this one out, though.” 

“Oh,” she says, trying and failing to keep the edge of disappointment from her tone. “Can you help me brainstorm ideas after school anyway?” Blaine smiles and nods and closes his locker, slides his arm through hers as they walk down the hall. 

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” he says. 

*

She sings ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ in Glee Club. Blaine shifts in his seat and looks uncomfortable, but it’s honest and it’s true. She finishes with a breathless, “Will you got to Sadie Hawkins with me?” and he looks around them before shaking his head minutely and whispering, “Thank you? But no.” She doesn’t know which of them is more embarrassed, but her embarrassment ferments itself into outright anger by the time she catches up with him at lunch, and she explodes in the hallway, ready to lay every single one of her emotions out for him, and explain exactly how he leads her on, and how this is all his fault. 

“I’m not going,” he says again, when she’s calmed down. She heaves a breath and narrows her eyes, and he says, “It’s not you, Tina. I just – not _this_ dance. I can’t.” 

She remembers, then, one of their many conversations with his mother as they discussed him transferring to McKinley, and the story of a 14-year-old Blaine going to his first real dance with a boy. Not even a boy he liked, so much as just a boy who happened to like boys, too. She remembers how that turned out for them both, and how worried his mom had still looked. “Oh,” she says, and blood floods her skin. “Come with me. Just friends. I promise. Things will be different this time.” 

“You can’t know that, Tay,” he breathes, and she nods her head firmly. 

“I’m going to make sure of it.” 

Blaine takes her hand and squeezes it. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” 

Tina feels her heart grow two times bigger. 

*

The dance was, Blaine concedes in the car on the way home, a lot of fun. Tina’s theme was beautiful, the girls sounded collectively fantastic on ‘Locked Out Of Heaven’, and he and Sam had saved the Glee club. 

“Thank you,” he says, standing with her outside of her front door. She stops looking for her key in her purse and looks at him instead. 

“I had a good night,” she responds, and steps into his space to wrap him in a warm hug. Blaine’s arms wind around her body in response. It’s easy, and it’s as natural as breathing when he turns his face into her hair to inhale the scent of her shampoo. She steps back first and offers him a smile, which he returns. “I guess it’s late,” she says, resuming her search for her key, and Blaine checks the time on his phone. It’s nearing midnight, and he knows his mom will be waiting up for him as well. 

“Yeah,” he says, and then, again. “Thank you, Tina. For this.” 

She brandishes her key at him and they both laugh, her eyes crinkling. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she smiles, and Blaine heads back to his car with his heart feeling lighter in his chest. 

*

The arbitrary lesson plan for the week is ‘diva’. Blaine knows a thing or two about that, but he’s not concerned enough about winning that he doesn’t still see Tina. When she laments that no one thinks ‘diva’ and pictures her, Blaine invites her back to his house to work on the assignment together. There are, he declares, loads of badass Asian divas. And, aside from that, Tina Cohen-Chang does not need to emulate anyone other than herself. She’s a diva at her very core, and they will make an empowering playlist for her to prove it. 

He leaves Tina in his room while he goes to make tea, and when he comes back, she has kicked her shoes off and is lying across his bed, staring at the pictures of Kurt that he still has out. “Do you miss him?” she asks, and he sets the tray down on the chest at the foot of his bed and crawls across the bed to sit cross legged beside her. 

“Yeah,” he says simply. “Sometimes.” He’s silent for a moment, and then amends, “A lot of the time. Do you? Miss Mike?” 

She sighs and hums and sits back up, chews the inside of her mouth. “I don’t know,” she says. “Sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I think I miss just having someone, you know? He was my first, a whole bunch of my firsts. I think I miss that? I’m not sure if I feel guilty for not missing him more or not, sometimes.” 

Blaine nods his head and meets her eyes, and she pushes herself upright, makes herself comfortable sitting on her heels. “Have you ever kissed a girl?” she asks, and he flashes back to that time, standing on his porch, a little worse for wear, when she’d pressed a kiss to his mouth. 

“Not... really?” he hedges, and the corners of her mouth flick upwards. 

“Would you want to? I mean, have you thought about it? Ever?” 

He can feel himself being drawn in, can feel his hand reaching for her face, even as it doesn’t move from his lap. He nods mutely instead. 

When she leans in to kiss him, he does absolutely nothing to stop her. 

*

It’s different, kissing Tina in his room. His parents are downstairs. He can hear the TV, muted by distance but a reminder that they’re not alone, not really. Tina’s perfume smells soft and inviting, and he finds himself leaning into her, his hand moving to frame her jaw, and that’s jarringly different as well, the way her face fits into his palm and her hair tumbles over his fingers in honeyed mermaid curls. 

It’s just the press of lips. It’s two lonely hearts and a moment in time. As they pull back and Blaine’s eyes open to meet Tina’s gazing back at him, he flicks a tiny smile and drops his chin, looks away. Tina reaches for his hand and pulls it into her lap, runs her thumb across his knuckles. 

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she says, and Blaine huffs a tiny laugh, turns his hand over in hers and tangles their fingers together. 

“How can it not mean _something_?” he asks, his eyes finding the curve of her mouth. 

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be a thing,” she says. “No pressure. Just us and here and now.” 

“I want him back,” he says after a moment, interwoven hands still in Tina’s lap, her thumb rubbing soft circles over the knuckle of his, short circuiting his brain and making it hard to think. 

“I know.” Her voice is simple and free of judgement, offering only a solution and not a forever. “And you’ll get him back. I know you, Blaine. But this could be just for now, so neither of us has to be lonely.” 

Blaine nods and smiles and Tina turns into him, cups his face with her free hand and leans in to press another kiss to his lips. 

It’s not fireworks, but it’s human and it’s contact, and maybe that could be enough to dull the aching in their hearts. 


End file.
